Jessica has a T-shirt that says
“Position your refrigerator away from a heat source”
which reminds me of other T-shirts
bearing useful wisdom
such as “Truth is political (probably)”
and “A third wife is for life, not just for Christmas” – and when

a quiet and relaxing Saturday
is ruined by a blocked toilet and the plumber
in the house all day
that thing of Schopenhauer’s –
“Life sucks. Put on a record.” –
always comes to what I call my mind, so imagine if you can

a peanut in a biscuit tin, the peanut’s
my brain and the tin’s my head and
scrawled on my brow in inedible ink is
“This way up”, which reminds me of that quip
of Humphrey Lyttelton’s: “On the box it always
says ‘open other end’ but it never is”, and while we’re on the subject

of truth, which is beauty
according to Keats, and unknowable
according to Hoyle, and available on the internet
in different versions and different languages,
and which it says on Wikipedia
can have a variety of meanings (such as the state of being the case,

being in accord with a particular fact
or reality, being in accord with the body of
real things, events, actuality, and fidelity to
an original or to a standard) for some
reason I think of Psychic TV’s “Live In Gottingen”:
it had a track on it called “Thee Truth” but it used to make my

girlfriend laugh so I only played it occasionally,
like after funerals or episodes of
“The Good Life” on cable,
and explanations don’t always explain, honesty
isn’t always helpful, and “Truth” will be the title
of my next book if ever I write a next book, and I am reminded of

those moments of clarity
that strike when least expected
and certainly not often,
and you understand everything for a moment,
but the moment only lasts a moment
and then it’s gone, and so are you and I.